Ted Hoffman

Bede on the Bedwetting of Tweedledee and Tweedledum

Fox Mulder, quoted from an Inexistent Script of X-Files

Opening Remarks

This article is a response to Bede's review of The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. Bede assigned his article the comical, humpty-dumpty sounding title: Tweedledee and Tweedledum on the Christian Faith, A review of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries[1].

I use the expression 'bedwetting' to refer to Bede's characterization of F&G (who he refers to as Lewis Carroll's Tweedledee and Tweedledum) as tacltess amateurs writing a 'wah wah' book and who employ 'shady practices' and commit irredeemable mistakes. Thus, in the scholarly ballpark, in Bede's mind, F & G are like toothless intellectual infants merely wetting themselves.

Bede's review is a scathing attack whose main focus is not the positive contribution of the book Jesus Mysteries, but a focused effort at painting the authors as unqualified conspiracy theorists whose work is so unscholarly that HarperCollins "has even decided to use a special imprint called ‘Thorsons’ for everything they publish in the field".

This article will focus on Bede's review and not on his object of attack and sarcasm, or the works of JP Holding or Glen Miller. Bede has recently peddled his review on this forum as a rebuttal of the ideas in the Jesus Mysteries. My intention is to show that Bede's review fails to qualify as a serious debunking effort and that his public claim that through his review, the "assemblage of outdated and incorrect ideas compiled in an effort to revive the discredited 'pagan borrowing' thesis" is not not in fact "disassembled like a spring chicken".

Bede's article is in JP Holding's Tektonics website (link [1] below). Holding, known to be a former prison librarian, is known for his hostile, rough-and-dirty unscholarly approach at dealing with critics. Unbridled sarcasm, satirization and ad-hominemization are his stock-in-trade and Bede, the Venerable bede, a christian votary and and self-professed apologist, seems to have generously employed Holding's tactics in handling F & G's and their work.
Holding, who has got himself christened JP Horsemanure from his mud fights, must be proud to have fast-learners like Bede who bloat Holding's chest-thumping website with such articles as an expression of solidarity.

Having said that, lets now examine Bede's article.

Does the Jesus Mysteries get Disassembled Like a Spring Chicken?

In other words, is Humpty Dumpty right to laugh at Tweedledee and Tweedledum for having wet themselves? and does he get to have the last laugh?

Bede starts by lamenting that in England, there will be "no end to the line of pseudo-historical books about Jesus" and he purports to apologize to his countrymen (presumably on behalf of F & G). After drying his crocodile tears, he then starts attacking the personalities of F & G who he says " haven’t got a peer reviewed paper or scholarly monograph between them". Bede also alleges that "HarperCollins, who publishes The Jesus Mysteries, has even decided to use a special imprint called ‘Thorsons’ for everything they publish in the field".

Simply put, Thorsons collections are books for mind, body and spirit. And the collection includes many respectable books. Authors like C. S. Lewis and Timothy Freke are in the list of Thorsons authors. Its more probable that the 'spiritual' messages in Jesus Mysteries led the publishers to group it under Thorsons, as opposed to the reasons Bede ascribes to that. Peter Gandy is not listed among the authors of Hortons and has up to twenty books under his name. Secondly, F & G are graduates of Classical Civilization and Philosophy. What that means is that these are people who know what scholarly work entails and have a good grasp of how civilizations and cultures rise and fall. Bede, of course fails to mention these. The little he can give to their credit is an ambiguous: "Their university degrees are not relevant to the task at hand or especially bedazzling (a BA and MA)". Not that certificates mean more than the merits of arguments themselves, but its uncharitable for Bede to give only a bracketed and content-free "BA and MA" to F & G.

But before we can further examine Bede's work, he abruptly aborts his purported mission and says: "Glenn Miller has nailed this idea* to our almost total satisfaction here, and now J. P. Holding himself is piecing together the rebuttal to end all rebuttals here. So rather than repeat these great men’s work, I’d like to concentrate on some of the specific howlers and shady practices in the present book."
* the idea that Christianity is a product of various pagan myths

So, Bede's newly chosen mission is to "concentrate on some of the specific howlers and shady practices in the book". Lets read on.

Bede proceeds by declaring: "...neither Gandy nor Freke have ever before demonstrated much grasp of critical history or biblical interpretation". He offers no indication about how he arrived at this conclusion. He leaves the reader wondering 'when did he conduct a survey of their works?'. Bede says that a Masters degree from a British University is not impressive because it is easy to come by, unlike in North America. The reader is of course left wondering 'how so'?.
After rubbishing the academic qualifications of F & G, Bede proceeds to characterize Peter Gandy as a mealy-mouthed crank (or crackpot). Bede claims, through a questionable anecdote, that he buttonholed Gandy and asked him "if any academics at respectable universities supported his thesis" and says Gandy gave the standard response ‘wah-wah’ book authors like him always give. The standard response being "that real scholars secretly agree with them but dare not speak out and face the scorn of their colleagues".

It is unclear to the reader whether Bede and Gandy already had a common understanding on what "respectable universities" referred to dusring their alleged conversation. In any event, Bede doesn't list them in his article or let the reader get his meaning other than "British Universities [not respectable] and Universities in North America [respectable]".

Bede proceeds to claim that even the academy (represented by the Jesus seminar) which is not a friend of Christianity, is "willing to discard all notions of objectivity to recreate a Jesus who is to their liking" yet, even in ther hostility towards christianity, the academy "has no time for the Jesus myth". Bede then asks the reader rhetorically: "And if even the enemies of orthodox Christianity do not take it seriously, why on earth should we?"

Here, Bede portrays christ myth hypothesis as an expression of hostility towards christianity. This is misleading and false. His article is evidently written to christians who, perhaps due to theological commitments, cannot see the logical fallacies and emotive appeals Bede employs here.

For the sake of clarity lacking in Bede's article: the christ myth hypothesis is the result of deicated efforts towards understanding the puzzling roots of christianity and has come as a finding of those research efforts. It is not a tenet like the historicity of Jesus. Its the result of research work. Bede treats the christ myth thesis as a weapon for hurting christianity: a weapon which, according to Bede, is so desperate and ill-founded that even true 'enemies of christianity' do not employ it. This is a sophisticated form of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Due to its uniqueness and element of piggybacking, perhaps it will one day be given a name and earn itself a place in the list of logical fallacies. Maybe a name like "no true challenge of christianity fallacy".

Bede notes that the Jesus Mysteries has "a long bibliography and lots of notes" then shortly starts complaining . He laments: "...very many of the books referred to in the notes are extremely old and very hard to get hold of for any one without a first class library at hand".
Now the reader can then ask Bede, "is Freke and Gandy also supposed to also provide the books they list in their bibliography?". Since when is that a scholarly requirement? Is it their mistake that the libraries Bede can access dont have the books? Should they omit them because Bede cannot locate them?

Bede recounts mournfully how he went to "a summer school at the University of Wales" and "the unfeasibly large University of London Library" to look for the books" where he found some of the books listed but not all of them. Then Bede pouts like a spoilt child who has found the cookie jar empty, that since he could not find some of the books, the bibliography is bad because it references very old books. When the reader expects him to demonstrate how he decided how old is old, he runs and clings on the coattail of of his mentor JP Holding (the foul-mouthed ex-prison Librarian) and opines: " as J. P. Holding has demonstrated, modern Mithras studies have moved on a good deal".

Now, you readers of this article better note that, based on a scholarly and authoritative source, (*cough*) "modern Mithras studies have moved on a good deal" and those old books should not appear in bibliographies of any serious books (*cough * cough*).

After his prima-donna tantrum (after failing to find 'old books' in a non-respectable university library - what did he expect - isn't University of London a 'British university'? *cough*), Bede then claims that F & G are not "objective scholars" (I thought he already declared them non-scholars - he's forgotten that too?) but says they are "people who are willing to pull the wool over the eyes of their readers". He then asserts that "they refer many times to The Mysteries of Mithra by Francis Cumont and published in 1903. Yet we find that in his comparison of Mithraism and Christianity, Cumont (certainly no friend of Christianity himself) specifically states that unlike Mithras, Jesus was a real person."

Its patently fallacious to argue that since one refers to a certain author severally, he/she must therefore agree on every point the author makes or arrive at the same conclusion. But this is the kind of absurdity Bede expects the readers to believe when he makes such arguments.

Bede then states: "On the basis of some third century pictures of crucifixions, the authors claim Bacchuus was crucified and Christians copied the idea. This is their piece de resistance and they even put one of the pictures on the cover of their book. But suppose there existed an earlier source who stated categorically that no pagan godman was crucified. That would destroy their case and reading the Jesus Mysteries you would assume that neither Freke or Gandy knew of such a source even if it existed. You would be wrong."

What Bede is arguing above is that if he can provide evidence that "an earlier source stated categorically that no pagan godman was crucified" like Jesus, that would falsify the idea that crucifixion was copied by christians from the Pagans.

Having set the stage, we are now prepared to see how Bede, what was that...yes, "disassembles the idea like a spring chicken". The reader leans closer in rapt attention and expectation.

Bede writes that Justin Martyr "is a second century writer who therefore predates all the pictures of pagan godmen being crucified"

Bede proceeds to quote Justin Martyr:

"But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically.� Justin Martyr ’s First Apology LX"

There are so many errors and weaknesses to this argument and I will only examine a few.

The first and most obvious one is that Justin Martyr, like Bede (21st century) was a christian apologist (mid second century) - this means that we cannot rely on him as an objective source about whether christianity borrowed from the pagans or not: he had a theological agenda.

Secondly, The First Apology, which was addresed to Emperor Antoninus Pius (and his sons Lucas Marcus Aurelius), is by definition, a defense (however poor) of christianity as a unique religion while watering down the pagan similarities. It was also meant to reify christianity above the Pagan religions. To refer to this document to support Bede's argument is like referring a scientology book confirm the veracity of scientologist claims.

We do know that Justin, in Dialogue with Trypho, 69, expressed his surprise that satan had imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses by having Pagans believe/say that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele and having died, he(Bacchus) rose again, and ascended to heaven.[2]


Thirdly, at least from the sources I have checked ([3],[4]), what Bede quotes is not from First Apology LX. To prove this, I quote First Apology LX : PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF THE CROSS in full, below:

I am unable to locate the exact passage that Bede quotes in the other parts of First Apology.

Further, and contrary to Bede's line of argument, Justin admits (at least in First Apology), that, with respect to Jesus' virgin birth, death and resurrection, he (Justin) "finds nothing different" from what the pagans propounded about their gods. I quote him below:

First Apology CHAPTER XXI -- ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
Now, at this point, I leave it to the readers to judge whether any spring chicken was actually disassembled and by who.

In continuation, Bede states that F & G "claim that the ancients ‘knew’ the earth went around the sun" and Bede claims that its untrue and adds that "To hint that the heliocentric model was knowledge lost because of Christianity is simply daft". Of course I don't need to inform the reader that calling an idea daft does not make it daft. Bede simply isn't up to the job of providing a critique to the work he claims to have set out to review. Maybe he is writing from the assumption that his audience is uncritical, mentally lazy and already share the position he holds. Perhaps its because of this that he so extravagantly squanders an opportunity to terminally debunk an idea he loathes. Note that this does not entail that I agree with the argument F & G make: just that Bede's critique is apallingly hands-off and bereft of content.

Bede, presumably his 'spring chicken' largely 'disassembled', proceeds to fault F&G for quoting GA Wells and Ian Wilson and he belittles away GA Wells as a mere professor of German. He now proceeds to nibble small fry (not that he sank his teeth on any meat so far), or he is already tired because his approach at this point is less thorough and lackadaisical. Or his smugness is beginning to show through. Or maybe the article is requiring more than one grunt. Wait - or is he falling asleep on the job?

The small fries include the claim that "early Christians destroyed ancient pagan texts wholesale". To which Bede writes in response: "In fact the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature makes it clear that there was no policy of destruction and the church was active in preserving ancient texts". Now, its unclear to me whether F & G argued that the church had a policy of destroying arguments. Whats clear to me that lacking a policy of destroying documents does not entail that the church was not destroying documents. The Catholic church had no policy of child molestation yet we have had numerous cases of exactly that taking place.
Secondly, that the church was actively preserving texts does not entail that they werent destroying other heretic texts. So, in essence, Bede handles the argument that the church destroyed arguments by introducing a red herring. And we have identified his handwaving above. Bede then proceeds, without citing specific arguments , that "Glenn Miller has fully investigated this widespread and baseless accusation.". Unfortunately, it is not enough to claim it has been done elsewhere by somebody else. Another content-free response from Bede whizzes past.

Another small fry is the question of Pauline epistles. Bede writes: "In their survey of the New Testament, the authors say that only seven of Paul’s letters are genuine and that the Acts of the Apostles is a second century fiction. They explain that the Paul revealed in the genuine letters was a Gnostic and that the spurious letters and Acts were written to cover it up. The allegation that the letters are fakes is dealt with elsewhere but just suppose it is true. In that case, we would not expect to find Freke and Gandy quoting from Acts and the spurious letters to make their ridiculous point that Paul was really a Gnostic. But that is exactly what they do using both Colossians and Ephesians."
It is unclear whether, where and how "..the allegation that the letters are fakes is dealt with". Another ipse dixit.

Robert M. Price, a Professor of Biblical Criticism and New Testament (who, by the way, is a former Christian apologist and a defender of the evangelical faith) writes:
[5]

For clarity, I Thessalonians 2:15-16 is argued to have been interpolated because the last statement ,"...for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost" is regarded as an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem which occured many years after the epistle was written. I Timothy 6:13 (and the pastorals in general) are not accepted as Pauline for good reasons, some of which have been indicated in [6].

I don't want build up on the question of the forgery of 'Pauline epistles' because its inessential at this point and because its not a major point in Bede's review. I include links for the curious readers (mythicists generally accept the basic authenticity Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Phillipians, and Philemon)

The tiny bit of morsel that Bede lastly licks up gingerly is what he claims is the anachronistic fashion he claims F & G treated the Roman Catholic Church in their book. He ends his review with a grammatically incorrect sentence:
"Still, if anachronism is the greatest crime a historian it is probably the least of the sins of Messrs Freke and Gandy". But thats a venial error. We can let it slide. He doesn't back up his accusation with any relevant quotes so we cannot really comment on whether F & G refer to the RC anachronistically, in any event, its not central to their thesis, I am sure.

Do all theologians regard Freke and Gandy's work the way Bede does? Paul William Barnett, who is an Anglican Bishop of North Sydney (Theological scholar and professor) said this in an interview: "...Freke and Gandy are more formidable than Thiering or Spong. Thiering’s Qumran-based reconstruction is just too fantastic to be taken seriously and Spong merely rehashes Michael Goulder’s midrash line which R.T. France and others demolished years ago."
Take that for whatever its worth.

Conclusion

Bede disassembles no spring chicken as he claims at the top of the page. The imagery of spring chickens makes his article a sad irony. His review is weak, faulty, shallow and riddled with logical fallacies and lacks any good reasons for discrediting F & G or their work.


References

[1] http://www.tektonics.org/TF.JM_060960581X.html
[2] http://www.geocities.com/zuigga/j04.htm
Dialogue with Trypho in full: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0128.htm
[3] http://www.ccel.org/fathers/ANF-01/j...html#Section60
[4] http://www.eucharisticlife.com/ELima...0/Apology.html
[5] http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...e/fiction.html
[6] http://firstnewtestament.netfirms.co...arth_jesus.htm

Bede

No time to deal with all of this. Will return to Justin Martyr after the weekend.

Firstly, I did not assign the title or the editiorial remarks at the top. Only the body of the review is by me. Hence, I will not be responding to Jacab’s complaints about that.

It is a fact that F&G are published by an imprint of Harper Collins that specialises in astrology, tarot and new age mysticism. In the UK, CS Lewis is published by HarperCollin’s Fount imprint which specialises in Christian devotion and apologetic work. I would not consider it suitable for scholarship either. However, Lewis’s scholarly works are published by Cambridge University Press. This shows even with the same author the imprint used does matter and varies between scholarly and non-scholarly work.

Why should I not mention this? It tells us what the publisher thinks of the book and of its likely market. Also, it is true that F&G are non-specialists making extremely radical claims. This too can fairly be mentioned.

The conversation with Gandy took place at the Cygnus’s Study discussion boards exactly as I portrayed it. I would be happy with almost any North American or British university but the fact is no scholar apart from Robert Price even give F&G the time of day. There’s no getting away from this Jacob.

There are fine British Universities, my own point was that an MA takes one year at them, and two years in North America. Also, in Scotland and Oxford and Cambridge you get an MA for completing your first degree which can be misleading. Jacob makes rather too much of this.

The Christ Myth is an attack on Christianity and is only held by hard core anti-Christians. F&G’s book oozes hatred for Christianity while Doherty has even founded an imprint to attack Christianity with. Robert Price is also a part time anti-apologist.

I allege F&G deliberately used hard to find books to ensure people could not check their references. Believe me, Jacob, I have library cards for the three biggest libraries in the UK and I can get hold of anything I want to. Sadly, most people have not got that advantage. There are huge amounts of easily available Jesus scholarship and F&G ignore almost all of it.

Also, it is unscholarly and generally considered dishonest to use an authority against its own thesis and not mention that the authority disagrees completely with your thesis. That Jacob considers this excusable (for instance in the case of F&G’s use of Cumont) shows he hasn’t grasped the idea of scholarship at all.

More later.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Toto

The Canadian religious writer Tom Harpur is a mythicist who considers himself a Christian. He seems to be more interested in reforming Christianity than destroying it.

F&G do not "ooze" hatred for Christianity - only for its excesses and intolerance.

Robert Price is a former Christian apologist who followed the logic and scholarship to realize the faults in apologetic scholarship. He now debates apologists, very effectively. He attends an Episcopal Church because he likes the ritual and the tradition.

These people are not motivated by hatred of Christianity. They went where their research or their hearts took them.

If you want some real anti-Christian rhetoric, you will have to read American Atheist's Frank Zindler's work.

Mythicism florished in the 19th century, and has fallen out of academic favor. Many of the resources are obscure, and also outdated.

Was it Cumont's thesis that Jesus was a historical figure, or was that just something he accepted that was not a vital part of his thesis regarding Mithraism?

GakuseiDon

I agree with Toto here. As much as I loathe F&G's TJM as a deliberate cynical piece of writing, I don't see any hatred for Christianity in it. Nor in Doherty's work. (In Archarya's writings, I would say yes).

Bede

The Justin Martyr passage is First Apology LV (not LX, I'll ask JP to correct this). Other than that I stend by every last word of my review.

Having had a chance to read through Jacob's diatribe and remembering his performance in the past, I don't see the point in going any further with this.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Magdlyn

Jacob Aliet, thank you for your long and thorough rebuttal of Bede's Tektonics' review of TJM. You certainly did a much more thorough job than I could have, had I even the time!

I feel led to a disclaimer. I am forever grateful to Freke and Gandy and to the thesis in their books. It was my most thorough intro to details about the Christ Myth and Xitianity's and Judaism's connection to "paganism," the semi-lost religion/philosophy of gnosticism and much more.

I have spent decades on the edge of the revelation and had already seen some parallels as shown by Campbell, Jung and even bits of Plato. F&G put it all together for me, and depsite what I now see as some mistakes in their scholarship, I am grateful for the excitement they instilled in me, which has led to a fascinating journey. Especially healing to me, has been their examination of the gnostic/mystic Paul, the "Christ within" idea, which is identical to the Buddha nature, and other religion's concepts of the divine dwelling in humans and nature itself.

I did not find F&G to be anti-Xtian at all. They merely point out 2 levels of Xtianity that was deliberately veiled from me and most other people for so long. I have a newfound respect for Jesus, Sophia and their "dad" than I had ever had. Something had always seemed fishy to me about Xtianity (which is why I left it 3 decades ago). Now I know where the smell of the fish is coming from. I am also grateful to Pagels, Spong, Doherty and Price and will continue my research with enthusiasm, now on the lookout for the difference between careful and shady scholarship (not to mention apologia).

ichabod crane

Reading all of this thread really saddens me. I feel a sense of despair that people with opposing views can't respect each other and argue intelligently on the issues, which enlightens everybody including those involved in the debate, rather than writing in such a nasty manner. I don't know whether Bede realizes this, but such a manner of writing actually makes people long to reject what he is saying, irrespective of what validity there may be in his arguments.

I don't hold to the Jesus Myth theory presently, but I am interested in it, and it is worthy of further exploration. I don't regard it as being some anti-Christian conspiracy. Of course it is not compatible with conservative evangelical style Christianity, but surely we can have a rational debate about these things without anyone outside that camp being demonized ("hard-core anti-Christians", man, they must be scary, I'd better keep my distance).

If anything, the Jesus Myth debate has stimulated me, when I have time, to track down the original sources and investigate things for myself. I have a science background prior to studying theology, and have a Ph.D. and 18 published papers in international journals related to neuroscience, so I know academia and how it works. Just because a person is on the fringe of the academic community, and does not have many publications, does not necessarily mean that their ideas are worthless. In fact, most of the people doing really interesting work I found were outside the mainstream and on the fringes of the research community. I do not disrespect scholarship, but I also don't worship credentials and reputations. Let's deal with the arguments, not the persons.

By the way, despite the alleged complete disapproval of the Jesus Myth theory in academia, I looked at the website of a nearby University with a major New Testament studies programme, and they had a long list of different theories about Jesus and who he was that, I was pleased to see, included the Jesus Myth theory and links to Doherty and other sites, as well as many other theories by more well known scholars, ranging from very liberal views right through to conservative evangelicals. That's the way it should be.

GakuseiDon

Actually, the worst comments that JA highlights were the editorial comments put in by JP Holding, and not Bede's at all. Bede never uses the words "disassembled like a spring chicken", "bedwetting" or "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". I hope that JA will admit at least that.

I agree 100% with Bede's comments on TJM, which I found quite reasonable and fair (not sure about issues like master degrees though). In fact, he is less scathing than I would have been.



Well said!

GakuseiDon

No, quite the opposite. Pointing out the uniqueness was the exception. Justin in fact was stretching to find similarities between Christianity and pagan religions. At that time, Christianity was regarded as a philosophically despised superstition. Justin wanted to show that Christianity had much in common with pagan philosophy, though naturally Christianity was superior.

Many of the apologists of his time (Tatian, Tertullian, Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus, Minicus Felix) were concerned with making Christianity philosophically acceptable. They did this in two ways:
(1) stressing the antiquity of Christianity over pagan religions, through a claimed continuance from OT writings
(2) claiming that pagan philosophers borrowed 'Christian' ideas, either from the OT or directly via God's (or the devil's) inspiration.

No, Justin wasn't expressing surprise. He was stretching the point (even more than someone like Archarya) to force the 'imitation'. Here are some examples of 'imitations' that Justin gives:

(1) Bacchus dying and rising again is an imitation of the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses.
(2) The idea that "Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died" is an imitation of the Scripture which speaks of Christ, "strong as a giant to run his race".
(3) Mithras being begotten of a rock is an imitation of the words of Daniel, who uttered that "a stone without hands was cut out of a great mountain".

Now, I've seen many comments by Christ Mythers that Justin recognised similarities, but I've never seen any of them actually use the above similarities for themselves.

ichabod crane

OK, fair enough. It sounds like I should have blamed Holding rather than Bede. But in any case, it's nice to know that there are some people out there who are interested in a rational debate with the aim of benefiting everone. I've always found your posts, and a number of other people here involved in this debate on both sides of the fence, very constructive.